On the state of atlas cartography in Austria

Ingrid Kretschmer discusses the Atlas der Republik Österreich, completed in 1980 under Hans Bobek after twenty years of work and publication, and the 1986 supplement Karten zur Regionalstruktur Österreichs by M. Fesl and H. Bobek. The atlas comprises 127 sheets and two cover sheets, with 309 main and inset maps. Kretschmer identifies synthesis as its guiding methodological principle and argues that this helped many sheets retain their currency. Citing Bobek's assessment, she reports that at least 46 sheets remained fully current and another 36 retained value over one to two decades; slightly less than a third were of reduced interest because their underlying data had aged. She notes that the atlas was not being continuously updated. The supplement contains four complex thematic maps at 1:1,000,000 covering population change in 1971–1981, the socioeconomic structure of the resident population, tourism, and regional formation through service and employment centres. Kretschmer explains their use of official statistics and research on central-place hierarchies and catchment areas, as well as their links to earlier atlas sheets, which allow comparison over time. She praises the information they convey from the national scale down to municipalities. Her detailed discussion highlights the population map's first cartographic representation of roughly 400 lowest-level service centres and self-supplying settlements, the tourism map's combination of eight characteristics for each reporting municipality, and the integration of employment, service provision and commuting relationships in the regional-structure map.